Municipality · Southwest China
Chongqing
重庆
The mountain city where the Jialing meets the Yangtze
Chongqing is a municipality directly under the central government in south-west China, built on the hilly peninsula where the Jialing River flows into the Yangtze. It was China's wartime capital from 1938 to 1946, became a municipality in 1997, and stretches east to the Three Gorges; it is known for its hotpot, its terraced cityscape and the Dazu Rock Carvings.
Key facts
- Seat of government
- Yuzhong District
- Abbreviation
- 渝 (Yú)
- Area
- about 82,400 km²[1]
- Resident population
- 31.87 million(as of end of 2025)[2]
- Gross regional product
- CNY 3.38 trillion(as of 2025)[2]
- Census population
- 32.05 million(as of 2020 census)[3]
- Divisions
- 26 districts, 8 counties, 4 autonomous counties[1]
- UNESCO World Heritage sites
- 2 (1999, 2007)[4]
Profile
- Chinese name
- 重庆
- Abbreviation (简称)
- 渝
- Type
- Municipality
- Region
- Southwest China
- Seat of government
- Yuzhong District (seat of the municipal government)
- Area
- about 82,400 km²
- Divisions
- 26 districts, 8 counties and 4 autonomous counties
- Ethnic groups
- Han, Tujia, Miao
- Languages
- Chongqing dialect, Tujia, Hmong (Miao)
Languages
Chongqing dialect
重庆话
A variety of Southwestern Mandarin close to Sichuanese, with a sharper, faster delivery; understood throughout the Sichuan Basin.
Tujia
土家语
Tibeto-Burman language of the Tujia people in the south-east of the municipality; now spoken by few, most Tujia having shifted to Mandarin.
Hmong (Miao)
苗语
Spoken in Miao communities of Pengshui, Xiushan and Youyang near the Guizhou and Hunan borders.
Name and abbreviation
In 1189 the Southern Song prince Zhao Dun was first made Prince of Gong — Gongzhou (恭州) being the name of the city at the time — and a few weeks later ascended the throne as Emperor Guangzong. To mark this “double celebration” he raised the prefecture's rank and renamed it Chongqing (重庆), “repeated celebration”. The official abbreviation 渝 comes from the Yu River, the old name of the lower Jialing, and from Yuzhou (渝州), the name the Sui dynasty gave the city in 581. The older name Ba (巴) recalls the Bronze Age people and kingdom of the eastern Sichuan Basin.
Historic names
巴
The Ba people and their kingdom, centred on the eastern basin and the Yangtze valley until the Qin conquest of 316 BCE.
江州
Name of the walled city built by Qin after the conquest of Ba, and of the Han-dynasty county on the same site.
渝州
Prefecture name from 581 until the Song dynasty; the source of the abbreviation 渝.
恭州
Name used for about a century until the renaming of 1189.
陪都
“auxiliary capital”
Official status given to Chongqing by the Nationalist government in 1940, during the war against Japan.
Land and climate
Chongqing covers the eastern Sichuan Basin and the mountains that ring it. Parallel ridges running north-east to south-west cross the west of the municipality; the Daba Mountains close it to the north, the Wuling Mountains to the south-east and the Dalou Mountains to the south. The Yangtze crosses the whole territory from west to east, picking up the Jialing at the city centre and the Wu River at Fuling, before entering the Three Gorges at Fengjie. The urban core stands on a narrow rocky peninsula between the two rivers, which is why the city is built in layers, with stairways, cliffside streets and bridges.
Landforms
Parallel ridges of eastern Sichuan
川东平行岭谷
Long anticline ridges with valleys between them; Gele Mountain and Zhongliang Mountain frame the city.
Daba Mountains
大巴山
The range along the northern border with Shaanxi and Sichuan.
Wuling Mountains
武陵山
Karst uplands in the south-east, the homeland of the Tujia and Miao.
Jinfo Mountain
金佛山
Table mountain in Nanchuan, part of the South China Karst World Heritage site since 2014.
Wulong Karst
武隆喀斯特
Natural bridges, the Qingkou tiankeng and the Furong Cave on the Wu River; part of the South China Karst site since 2007.
Rivers and lakes
Yangtze
长江
Flows for roughly 690 km through the municipality; the Three Gorges Dam downstream in Hubei has turned much of this stretch into a reservoir.
Jialing River
嘉陵江
Joins the Yangtze at Chaotianmen, the tip of the Yuzhong peninsula.
Wu River
乌江
Largest southern tributary of the upper Yangtze, flowing in from Guizhou through gorges to Fuling.
Three Gorges
长江三峡
Qutang Gorge begins at Baidicheng in Fengjie; Wu Gorge spans the border with Hubei; Xiling Gorge lies wholly in Hubei.
Climate
Chongqing has a humid subtropical climate with mild, overcast winters and long, hot, humid summers; it is traditionally counted among the “furnaces” (火炉) of the Yangtze valley. River fog is frequent in autumn and winter, giving the city its nickname “Fog City” (雾都). Spring and autumn are the most comfortable seasons; the mountain areas of Jinfo and Xiannü Mountain are cooler in summer.
History
The Ba people ruled the eastern basin in the Bronze Age until Qin conquered them in 316 BCE and built a walled city at the river junction. For much of imperial history the city was a regional centre overshadowed by Chengdu, but its position on the Yangtze made it the gateway to the upper river. In the thirteenth century the mountain fortress of Diaoyu Cheng in Hechuan held out against Mongol armies for decades. Opened as a treaty port in 1891, Chongqing grew into the commercial centre of the upper Yangtze, and between 1938 and 1946 it served as the seat of the Nationalist government during the war against Japan, enduring years of air raids. Separated from Sichuan in 1997 to manage the Three Gorges resettlement and to lead the development of the west, it became China's fourth municipality directly under the central government.
c. 1000–316 BCE
Ba kingdom
The Ba, known for boat-shaped coffins and a martial dance tradition, controlled the eastern basin and the river valleys.
316 BCE
Qin conquers Ba
The Qin minister Zhang Yi is credited with building the first walls of Jiangzhou at the river junction.
581
The Sui name the city Yuzhou
The origin of the abbreviation 渝, still used on licence plates and in place names.
1189
Renamed Chongqing
Emperor Guangzong of Song marked his “double celebration” by giving the city its present name.
1243–1279
Defence of Diaoyu Cheng
The fortress at Hechuan resisted the Mongols for more than three decades; the Great Khan Möngke died during its siege in 1259.
1362–1371
Chongqing as capital of the Xia state
The rebel leader Ming Yuzhen founded a short-lived state with its capital here before the Ming dynasty absorbed it.
1891
Opened as a treaty port
A customs house opened under an agreement with Britain, and steam navigation through the Gorges followed in the early twentieth century.
1938–1946
Wartime capital of the Republic of China
The Nationalist government, factories and universities moved upriver; Japanese air raids on the city between 1938 and 1943 killed many thousands of civilians.
August–October 1945
Chongqing negotiations
Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek met in the city after Japan's surrender; their agreement of 10 October did not prevent the civil war.
1997
Municipality directly under the central government
Chongqing and the surrounding prefectures of Wanxian, Fuling and Qianjiang were separated from Sichuan, partly to manage the resettlement caused by the Three Gorges Dam.
2003
Three Gorges Reservoir begins to fill
Rising water submerged old towns along the Yangtze in the east of the municipality; the reservoir reached its full level in 2010.
2011
Chongqing–Xinjiang–Europe rail freight
Among the first regular China–Europe freight train services, carrying laptops and other electronics made in the city.
2020
Chengdu–Chongqing Economic Circle
The central government made the twin-city region a national growth pole for western China.
World heritage
World Heritage sites
Cultural · inscribed 1999
大足石刻
Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian rock carvings of the ninth to thirteenth centuries at Beishan, Baodingshan and three other sites, notable for their everyday detail and the blending of the three teachings.
Natural · inscribed 2007 · shared
中国南方喀斯特
Wulong Karst was inscribed in 2007 and Jinfo Mountain added in 2014, together with sites in Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi.
Culture
Chongqing shares the Ba-Shu culture of the Sichuan Basin but prides itself on a brisker, more outspoken character than Chengdu — the port city of boatmen, porters and wartime refugees. Its street life is built around hotpot restaurants, noodle stalls and the stairways of the old town. The south-east, around Youyang, Xiushan, Shizhu and Pengshui, belongs culturally to the Tujia and Miao of the Wuling Mountains, with stilt houses and their own songs and dances.
朝辞白帝彩云间，千里江陵一日还。两岸猿声啼不住，轻舟已过万重山。Zhāo cí Báidì cǎiyún jiān, qiān lǐ Jiānglíng yí rì huán. Liǎng àn yuán shēng tí bú zhù, qīng zhōu yǐ guò wàn chóng shān.
“At dawn I left Baidi among the coloured clouds; a thousand li to Jiangling, back within a day. On both banks the gibbons' cries did not cease; my light boat has already passed ten thousand mountains.”
— Li Bai, “Departing Baidi City at Dawn” (早发白帝城), c. 759
Opera, music and dance
Boatmen's chants of the upper Yangtze
川江号子
Work songs once sung by trackers and oarsmen hauling boats through the rapids, led by a caller whose rhythm set the pace.
Sichuan opera
川剧
Performed in Chongqing as in Chengdu, including the mask-changing (变脸) that audiences know best.
Tujia hand-waving dance
摆手舞
Collective dance of the Tujia performed at festivals in Youyang and Xiushan.
Xiushan lantern dance
秀山花灯
Song-and-dance performance with lanterns, performed around the Spring Festival in Xiushan.
Crafts
Rongchang ramie cloth
荣昌夏布
Fine, cool “summer cloth” woven from ramie fibre in Rongchang.
Rongchang pottery
荣昌陶
Red and brown earthenware from the kilns of Anfu, made for centuries for daily use.
Liangping woodblock prints
梁平木版年画
Brightly coloured New Year prints of door gods and folk scenes.
Festivals and customs
Bangbang porters
棒棒
Porters carrying loads on bamboo poles up and down the stairways of the old city — an emblem of Chongqing, now much reduced in number.
Stilt houses
吊脚楼
Wooden houses propped on posts against steep slopes, once lining the riverbanks and still found in Tujia villages.
Hotpot culture
火锅文化
Hotpot is eaten year-round, even in the heat of summer, and is as much a social event as a meal.
Cuisine
Chongqing cooking belongs to Sichuan cuisine but is known for its bolder, rougher “jianghu” (江湖菜) dishes — heavy on dried chillies, Sichuan pepper and beef tallow, and often served in large portions. Hotpot is the city's signature, and a bowl of spicy noodles is the everyday breakfast.
Signature dishes
Chongqing hotpot
重庆火锅
Beef-tallow broth with chilli and Sichuan pepper, often in a nine-compartment pot (九宫格); tripe, duck intestine and brain are classic dippers.
Chongqing noodles
重庆小面
Wheat noodles in a sauce of chilli oil, Sichuan pepper, garlic and sesame — the city's breakfast.
Chicken with chillies
辣子鸡
Crisp fried chicken pieces buried in dried chillies, associated with Gele Mountain.
Maoxuewang
毛血旺
Duck blood, tripe and luncheon meat in a fiery broth, said to originate in Ciqikou.
Fish with pickled mustard greens
酸菜鱼
Fish slices in a sour broth of pickled greens and chillies, a Chongqing dish now eaten across China.
Hot and sour noodles
酸辣粉
Sweet-potato starch noodles with vinegar, chilli and peanuts.
Specialities
Fuling zhacai
涪陵榨菜
Pickled mustard tuber from Fuling, pressed to remove water and preserved with salt and chilli.
Fengjie navel oranges
奉节脐橙
Citrus from the slopes above the Yangtze at Fengjie.
Hotpot base
火锅底料
Blocks of beef tallow fried with chilli, Sichuan pepper and bean paste, made industrially in Chongqing for the whole country.
Rongchang ramie cloth
荣昌夏布
Traditional ramie textile, used today for clothing, fans and decorative work.
Notable people
Qin Liangyu (1574–1648)
秦良玉
Commander from Shizhu whose troops fought for the Ming; one of the very few women given a biography of her own in the official History of Ming.
Zou Rong (1885–1905)
邹容
Anti-Qing revolutionary from Ba county, author of the pamphlet The Revolutionary Army (革命军); died in a Shanghai prison.
Liu Bocheng (1892–1986)
刘伯承
Marshal of the People's Liberation Army, born in Kaizhou.
Lu Zuofu (1893–1952)
卢作孚
Founder of the Minsheng shipping company, whose fleet carried people and equipment upriver through the Gorges in 1938.
Nie Rongzhen (1899–1992)
聂荣臻
Marshal and director of China's nuclear and missile programmes, born in Jiangjin.
Economy
Chongqing is the largest industrial centre of the upper Yangtze. Motor vehicles and motorcycles have been its core industry for decades, joined since around 2010 by the assembly of laptops and other electronics, and more recently by new-energy vehicles. The river port, the China–Europe rail freight services and the Western Land-Sea New Corridor to the Beibu Gulf make it a logistics hub for western China. Much of the municipality's territory, however, is rural and mountainous, and the gap between the urban core and the eastern counties remains wide.
Main industries
- Automobiles, new-energy vehicles and motorcycles
- Electronics: laptops, displays and components
- Materials, chemicals and natural gas
- Equipment manufacturing
- Logistics and river shipping
- Food processing: hotpot base, pickles
- Agriculture: citrus, pigs, tea
Zones, ports and hubs
Liangjiang New Area
两江新区
Approved in 2010 as China's first national-level new area in the interior, north of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers.
China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone
中国（重庆）自由贸易试验区
Established in 2017, with areas in Liangjiang, Xiyong and around the Guoyuan port.
China–Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative
中新互联互通项目
Government-to-government project launched in 2015, from which the Western Land-Sea New Corridor developed.
Guoyuan Port
果园港
Inland river port linking Yangtze shipping with rail freight to Europe and to the sea at Qinzhou.
Mountains and nature
Getting there
- Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport, north of the centre, has domestic and international routes and is connected to the rail transit network.
- High-speed lines link Chongqing with Chengdu, Guiyang, Xi'an via the Zhengzhou–Wanzhou line to the east, and the national network; the main stations are Chongqing North and Chongqing West.
- Yangtze river cruises through the Three Gorges to Yichang in Hubei start from the Chaotianmen area.
- Within the city, rail transit includes monorail lines that run along cliffs and through a residential building at Liziba, and aerial cableways cross the Yangtze.
Entry rules for foreign visitors are on the visa and entry pages.
Frequently asked questions
Sources
- Chongqing Municipal People's Government — Chongqing Municipal People's Government (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- 2025年重庆市国民经济和社会发展统计公报 (Statistical Communiqué of Chongqing on the 2025 National Economic and Social Development) — Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Statistics (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- Seventh National Population Census communiqués — National Bureau of Statistics of China (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- World Heritage List: China — UNESCO World Heritage Centre (retrieved 27 September 2026)
- Chongqing — Encyclopaedia Britannica (retrieved 27 September 2026)
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